


A Familiar Song

by alby_mangroves



Series: Yuletide Stories [17]
Category: The Shape of Water (2017)
Genre: Canon Compliant, During Canon, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Interspecies Romance, Mild Angst, Missing Scene, Mutual Pining, Senses, communicating without speech, mild implied ideation of noncon, not between the main pairing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:34:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21833002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alby_mangroves/pseuds/alby_mangroves
Summary: The T4 laboratory was usually unattended just before clock-off time and here she was at the end of her shift with no Zelda to talk sense into her, and with just enough time to spare.
Relationships: The Asset/Elisa Esposito
Series: Yuletide Stories [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/194729
Comments: 12
Kudos: 60
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	A Familiar Song

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dragonflower1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonflower1/gifts).



> Thank you to L for the beta <3

☵

It always felt like three in the morning when one toiled in the bowels of the Occam Aerospace Research Center.

It was a liminal place with no windows to the outside world, no daylight or moonlight to judge the time. Elisa kept track of it through the routine she and Zelda had developed over the years, but Zelda, along with a few of the other women, had been called away to prepare an office for a visiting official. It was somehow harder to grasp the passing of time without her constant chatter and her innate ability to push from one goal to the next until they were done and it was morning, and time to go home again.

Despite how well they worked together, Elisa had gotten through her work faster than normal, and it was probably that they enjoyed each other’s company so much - they were both hard workers and did their job well, but they were also prone to fits of conversation, as strange as it might seem to anyone else, seeing as only one of them did the talking if you didn’t bother looking more closely. Or maybe it was that she’d long since noted that the T4 laboratory was usually unattended just before clock-off time and here she was at the end of her shift with no Zelda to talk sense into her, and with just enough time to spare until clocking off. There was really no question about how she’d spend it.

She carefully wound her way back through the underground corridors to the wide and heavy metal door of T4 and managed to slip in undetected, heart pounding like a runaway horse.

There was blood on the floor again.

Elisa’s stomach dropped even as her eyes flicked up to quickly scan the laboratory, but there was no sign of anyone else, only the blood congealing between the checkerplate grooves of the metal floor. The leaf-littered surface of the well was silent and black, gentle patterns of water rippling over the metal tubes that rose from the depths like the fans of an enormous church pipe organ.

For a moment she thought perhaps the creature had managed once again to-- but no, the blood didn’t trail out to the corridor. She wouldn’t be finding any more of Colonel Strickland’s fingers lying about. Instead, it led to the mouth of the well in fat glistening drops, a thick red smear on the tiled lip, which could mean only one thing.

It was fear for him that made her careless, made her rush to the edge, made her lean over the silent water to try and peer past that awful stillness until she’d leaned too far. Slipping, desperate hands scrabbling in that very same spill of blood, she came down hard on her elbow and the white jolt of pain made her gasp. Even if she could have shouted, there was no time - not even to take a proper breath - before she went in shoes and all, grainy dark water filling her mouth and flooding her nose.

The shock of the cold embraced her like a heavy blanket. She lost her bearings for just a moment until her outstretched toes found the bottom as her head found the tiled ledge, and it wasn’t a hard bang but it sure was enough to rattle her, enough to make her splutter and choke on the leafy detritus floating on the surface. Relief came fast when she was able to get her feet under her to stand, shaking hands gripping tight to the tiled lip of the well, coughing and spitting out the muck. She would have laughed a little at her own foolishness if it wasn’t for another big smear of blood, this one right there on the lip of the well where she’d gone over.

Finally she could breathe without coughing, and she gasped thickly and pushed wet hair from her face. The pull of chains clinked behind her and she looked over her shoulder - it was just like the first time, a tentative emergence, just those glistening eyes - and seeing it was only her and nobody else, he blinked, rising slowly, water washing over his wide shoulders and gushing out from under the thick iron ring around his throat, sluicing between the scales and plates of his chest.

He blinked at her from the shadows, the herb-laced water rippling gently over his abdomen and she realized that where he stood closer to the pipeworks, the water was deeper - deep enough for him to dive. He was in it up to his chest while she stood thigh deep and shivering near the edge, her soaked dress clinging to her body, breath still coming fast from her abrupt arrival inside the well.

She was cold in the shallow near the tiled lip but not from the water, it was only that she was wet and in a cold room. She knew the water, she felt its comforting embrace the same as always, even though there was certainly a little more of it than she was used to in the confines of her humble tub. She'd never been to the ocean, had never been swimming in a river, but she’d dreamed of it so often that water - all kinds of water - felt like an old friend from some half-forgotten memory, welcoming her exactly as she was, scars and all, without guile or shame; just like he had, somehow able to tell she wasn’t like the others - his captors. She felt so incredibly seen.

Just as slowly as he’d risen from the depths, Elisa walked towards him, further into the murky depths. She wanted to touch him. She wanted to sink beneath the water with him and feel the luminous plates that made up his extraordinary skin, the pretty blue trails that followed the wide almonds of his eyes and the ridges over his head, the slope of his shoulders, the webs between his fingers and the sinew and plates and fins adorning his arms. She wanted to touch him in water. Everything was _better_ in water.

Once, when she was small, the nuns at the orphanage had taken the children to the Baltimore Zoo. She’d never seen some of the animals exhibited there, not even in books. And that’s what it was - an exhibition, the animals nothing but specimens in their cramped cubicles and cages. The giraffe enclosure was one she recalled even now - the high concrete walls and wire-topped partitions separating the group of animals from each other. There had been small islands in the sea of concrete with some shrubs and palms growing in tiny mounds, and the giraffes would walk around them like prisoners in a prison yard, looking for a way to reach each other, but they never could. She remembered how they’d nibbled at each other’s faces through the holes in the wire, their soft velvety lips crushed against the metal.

Elisa and the other children had been led, two by two, to the penguin enclosure. The nuns filed past in single file and looked at the penguins, chatting and pointing, and the penguins stood calling and honking and looked at the parade of nuns waddling past them - it was like a kind of strange and bizarre symmetry, only nobody else seemed to see it. And beyond that they’d gone to see the Druid Hill reptile house. There’d been a man - an animal handler - and under his watchful eye the children had been allowed to touch some of the more benign animals: a little tree snake, a frog, a delicate salamander still wet from its tiny concrete and glass habitat.

It had been skittish and she’d sensed its sadness and awful loneliness, but touching it had been like the beginning of a familiar song and they’d had to drag her away struggling when it was time to leave. She’d wanted so desperately to hold onto it and never let it go but they took it from her hands and plopped it back into its little cell, and marched her back to the orderly two-by-two formation.

Now, when she lifted her hands to touch the amazing creature emerging from his steel and glass habitat, nobody was there to tear her away. Eisa’s heart heard that same familiar song, the soft beauty and the tough fight for it, the lightness of a gauzy frill and the slick glide over an unyielding shell. Her fingers followed the song, touching the multilayered collar of frills at his neck, perfectly arranged like the most dapper Elizabethan ruffle, crushed so mercilessly by that awful iron ring. She put her hand on his pale breast, feeling the intake of his breath and the trembling of his whole body - a wild thing beneath a stranger’s hand. He was standing very, very still, for her.

She found the shallow grooves between the plates of his skin and followed them with her fingertips, watching the colors that washed over him in the wake of her touch until the color was red and her fingertips came away glistening. Elisa blanched, remembering the mess on the floor. There had been an awful lot of blood on that floor.

He’d been stabbed with something - impaled on something - she couldn’t be sure, the wound was torn and ragged, and not at all clean. Blood seeped from it still, thick but sluggish. Clotting. He was in pain. _I’m sorry_ , she signed, _I want to help you_ , but he only stood there and allowed her to touch him as though he liked it too.

There were scars on his chest, white gouges, old and long since healed. She touched them and looked up at him, into his black, intelligent eyes - only they weren’t black at all up close, they were a cloudless night sky with a flickering galaxy of stars and they were looking right back at her, seeing all of her. He tilted his head and raised one of his hands to her, and she nodded and smiled a little, taking his clawed hand and placing it over her heart, no clearer way to tell him he could touch her, too, if he wanted.

He did want. Fanning out his long fingers, the webs between them so delicate and thin, he curved his palm over her breast, slowly, curiously. Elisa closed her eyes for a moment, lost in the sensation - his cold, smooth hand passing gently, firmly, over her body and tensing when it responded to his touch, hardening, peaking.

She blinked up at him and found his beautiful eyes focused on her, hand hovering over her, until he set it down on her body again, brushing his palm against her more intently, watching for her response, tipping his head towards her when her breath quickened and huffed. She was wet all over and maybe that was a part of it, part of the reason why his simple touch had ignited her this way when no touch had ever done so before, except her own. She felt heavy and sweet between her legs, water lapping gently at her beneath her floating skirt. She gasped when he palmed her breast with intent, and he blinked in his wondrous, unsettling way, rumbling deep in his chest, the trails she’d followed around his body lighting up blue from within.

Loud voices reached them from the corridor outside and they turned as one, ready to fight or flee, but it was only someone passing by, a timely reminder that their stolen moment had to end, and soon.

Elisa lifted her hand to his face, fingers skittering along the ridges and grooves, and with a last long look, she stepped back, stepped away from him, but he followed her with a rumble, and she didn't know how to tell him that she had to leave, she didn't _want_ to leave, she wanted to _stay_ \- but he was putting his hands on her waist and lifting her, effortlessly, to sit on the lip of the well.

Elisa smiled, relieved - he’d understood! - and signed, _Thank You_ , and watched with delight as he repeated the gesture. Another loud voice in the corridor had him turning away with a powerful twist and suddenly he was gone, leaves and litter swirling on the surface of the well in his wake. It was Strickland's voice, and Elisa's blood went cold. If he found her here like this, it would be the end of her job and who knew what else he could do to her, would be prepared to do to her, would happily do to her under the pretext of interrogation, and Zelda wouldn’t be able to help her, neither she nor dear Giles wouldn’t ever know what had happened to her.

Quickly now, Elisa wrung out her sodden skirt and lifted her legs back over the tiled ledge. God, she was soaked, her clothes, her hair, the herbs from the well sticking to her all over, and there was only one way out of the lab. There was nothing for it; she had to go out there and risk being seen. There was no other way.

Heels clicking on the metal plated floor, she dripped all the way to the door and put her ear to it, listening for a while, waiting for a lull, trusting her senses which had somehow always been especially well attuned to these kinds of things - the _knowing_ of where other bodies moved. Looking back towards the well, she saw him in the glass-fronted tube, hands spread wide on the glass, translucent webs between his fingers. She lifted her hand in a silent goodbye and watched a stream of bubbles float from his mouth, both of them speaking without words.

☵

The women's facilities weren't far and somehow she made it without drawing attention, holding the bulk of her dripping skirt in her hands. She had to help him. She had to do something, but what? Elisa’s heart ached with despair for him.

Shivering now, the adrenaline dissipating the further she went, Elisa keyed open the padlock to her locker and grabbed the spare apron and work dress she kept there. She toed off her sodden shoes and tucked them away in the corner of her locker to drain upside down, bundled her dry clothes into a towel and slipped into an empty shower cubicle.

She stepped under the hot spray, letting it wash away the kiss of cold air and the strange smelling debris from the well, all the while reliving each look, each touch, each moment of trust. He was beautiful. Truly beautiful, a man like no other. More than a man. More sincere and graceful and powerful and desirable than any man she had ever met. She felt him in her blood, in all the water in her body. The shower beat down over her neck while her fingers slid down over her wet belly until they were nestled in the groove of her, in the heavy warmth between her thighs. He had sensed her arousal, she was certain. It was in the way he looked at her with so much intensity, the wonderful sounds he had given her, how close he had let her come; she’d nestled almost right into his body. With her other hand, she echoed the gentle way he'd touched her breast. God, she _wanted_ him, she wanted him so much. Elisa sighed and closed her eyes, tipping her head back, enjoying her own touch for just a moment before taking the soap and briskly washing herself. She couldn’t here. She would, at home, in her bath. She wouldn’t even wait until evening.

A door banged closed somewhere out in the locker room and she jolted, hurriedly rinsing off and rushing through getting herself dry enough to dress. Her hands were shaking and her nylons clung to her still-damp legs and as she tried to roll them up her thigh, she caught the delicate sheer on fingers roughened from scrubbing. She stared in disbelief at the quickly forming ladder - she didn't have another pair.

Well. She shook her head to gather herself. They'd do to get home until she could darn them or get some clear nail paint dabbed onto the run to stop the ladder from spreading further.

Finally dressed, she brushed and pinned her hair, her mind on blue and green scales, on golden galaxies, on thin, delicate webbing and on cords of powerful muscle covered in silky gunmetal skin. She hurried from the showers and into the locker room, feet squeaking into her shoes, shrugging half-damp arms into her coat even as she threw open the door and ran right into Colonel Strickland where he’d been standing propped up against the door frame, his stinking, bandaged fingers hanging down right in her face.

Elisa stumbled back a step and froze there, her whole body tingling with shock, and looked up into his calm and placid face. He looked her over, taking his time, so completely at ease with his power over her that her blood froze in her veins. She was suddenly certain he meant to kill her. That his blood pressure wouldn’t rise while he was doing it, while watching her struggle for her last breath. He would simply observe, just like this. She bit down on the instinct to step back even further. He was a vulture looking at dying meat, patiently waiting for it to stop struggling.

"Showering after your shift?” he asked, and she gave him a small nod. It was true enough, in a way. "No Zelda today. Doing the work of two all by your lonesome." There was no need to nod, he already knew. Maybe he already knew everything. Elisa resisted the urge to fidget and lifted her chin higher.

"I imagine you worked up quite a sweat," he continued, eyes flicking over her body, cataloguing her: throat, scars, breasts, hips. His gaze had her wanting to fly out of her own, crawling skin. She lifted her hands and signed, _If you touch me I will bite off the other fingers_.

"I don’t even care what you’re trying to say,” he muttered quietly, still looking her over. “Imagine that. You could talk all day and all night and it wouldn’t matter a good goddamn. Isn’t that something. I imagine how peaceful that would be. I imagine that quite a bit," he drawled, in that low, possessing way that men like him had, assured by the whole world’s machinations revolving around them, and the confidence that they would always get what they wanted in the end. Elisa quickly scanned the corridor, but they were alone. Strickland's smile got meaner.

"And here you are, just like I've been imagining. Just showering after your shift. With your shoes on."

Elisa's stomach dropped like a stone, and she looked down at her feet, where a small puddle was spreading on the linoleum.

 _No_ , she signed, shaking her head for emphasis, _it was just water on the floor in the bathroom_ , but it was no use. Zelda wasn't here to translate and even if she had been, Elisa's laces were soaked and dripping. That didn't come from stepping in a puddle of water on the floor. Strickland knew. Somehow he knew and he followed her here, he’d been waiting and he would--

“There you are!” Zelda shouted, and then she was right there and stepping into their space, breaking the awful bubble. “Elisa, what on earth, I’ve been looking for you every- oh, excuse me Mr Strickland,” she said as if she’d just seen him right this very moment, “I hope you’re having a good morning, sir, please don’t let us keep you, so sorry to keep you,” and she put her arm around Elisa’s waist, pulling her away, talking all the while about the breakfast she was going to make for herself and her ungrateful husband. Elisa’s eyes felt hot and she couldn’t look at her friend or she’d burst into tears.

"Yes, of course, I expect you ladies need to get home," Strickland said belatedly, his face coming alive again from that awful dead-eyed stare, and it must have been clock-off time because the corridor was suddenly full of people, some leaving in droves and some making their way to their work stations - the dayshift was arriving. Elisa let herself be led way, feeling his eyes on her still and trying to not break into a run. Predators chased you when you ran.

☵

Strickland watched them until they disappeared from view around the corner, that meddlesome Zelda looking over her shoulder at him. Rubbing his chin, he turned, and followed small, wet shoe prints all the way back to T4. He’d get that orphan girl, and soon. He thumbed idly at the handle of the cattle prod hanging faithfully at his side. He was in just the right mood for a little howdy-do.

☵


End file.
